We live in a time where one of the fastest mediums, second only to the speed of light, governs the way we go about our lives – Communication. It did not always be that way. It was not too long ago that it could take anywhere from ten days to a few weeks for a handwritten letter to go from one country to another; when such a thing called the telegram existence (anyone remember one of those?); when an international phone call had to go through an operator who would patch it up to the person hundreds of miles away. All that happened within one generation, within the last thirty years!
We live in a time today where we get to know things as they happen thousands of miles away; we do not have to go buy a newspaper, it simply lands in our phones; international phone calls connect within seconds with no middle party needed and letters take a second to travel from New York to New Zealand in the form of an email. And with the advent of social media, it has gone to a whole other level – Welcome to the era of Twitter!
Twitter, a social media service launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and few others, is the prevailing benchmark for business communication. Simple and fast, with a 140-character limit, this technology broadly considered the ‘SMS of the internet’ is changing the way companies and businesses communicate and create awareness around the world. Designed to be compatible across multiple platforms (desks/ laptops/tablets/smartphones), communication has never been faster with the way Twitter blitzes information across the web in a heartbeat. So effective is it in fact that often news of an event, product or service often arrives only a little sooner than the original launch or airing of the news. In a time when the world has become a smaller place because of technology, services like Twitter cater to the likes of the ‘nerd who lives in the blogosphere’ just as well as it does to the stay at home mom putting her feet up to take a break from her chores. In an era where time is a precious commodity and people like to share their thoughts, opinions, and life in general on the web, quickly and hassle-free, Twitter has risen to be one among the most innovative breakthrough communication techniques.
While Twitter may have opened the doors to access to mindless rants of celebrities and scandals, it has also done its part in creating awareness and giving a voice to people across the world as a whole. From the 2010 Arab Spring revolts to Barack Obama’s second term campaign to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, Twitter led the way in bringing together people’s thoughts and opinions to speak as a united voice. But we can also learn something significant from Twitter’s core condition – 140-character limit. The limit restricts individuals to summing up their own message, with all its ideas and nuances, within that specific character count. This helps to develop a sense of keeping a thought or an idea to a pointed and concise focus and expressing it efficiently too! And that is a good communication skill to have! Who would have thought Twitter actually had something to teach us!
Communication Skills Training is an important aspect of corporate training that allows for companies to develop and hone specific communication skills within their employees and enabling them to be better at their jobs and interaction with people.